So you've probably clicked on this guide searching for a way to finally get rid of Castillian North America, or the BBB. Well I'm afraid that this guide doesn't have many solutions for you (I said many, not at all :), keep reading!). Instead this guide aims to reduce the many annoying occurances you find in a typical Europa Universalis 3 campaign including horrendous blobbing, Large countries unable to keep a hold on their empire and the lack of formidable opponents forming. With simple tweaks to the starting options as well as the way you play your game it is possible to minimise these from occuring. Through the your decisions you can let the fledgling A.I. form a country capable of defeating your glorious Byzantine empire. Also linked in the final section is a compendium of mods that greatly expand eu3's scope and rectify many of these issues.

The options menu can be daunting at first. A long list of which each choice often has several options but by scrolling through you can greatly change the way the game plays. Let's do a quick analysis of each option:

• Advisors and Leaders: These two options dictate by what means you acquire your advisors (artists, grand marshalls etc.) and you generals and admirals. They both have 3 options. Normal (Your generic way of getting them etc. purchusing them, getting them in events and the historical leaders you start with), Historical (only historical leaders and advisors at specific dates), and Event (Only get them through events). I find that these have a neglible impact on the A.I. as they generally only get there advisors through events but also nuy their leaders. As such I would leave it on normal so the A.I. has a fully rounded government.
  
  
• Colonists, Merchants and Missionaries: These have 2 options, Normal (e.g. pay for them) or Free. Leave colonists as Normals to reduce horrible blobbing of the coast lines as seen here:
  It can be beneficial to leave Merchants and Missionaries as free, in that way countries can be religiously homogenous, and smaller nations can accumulate wealth like they did historically.
  
  
• Inflation. The bane of large A.I. empires. In every single game I've played, I've sen any larger nations succumb to inflation of 30, 40+ and quickly collapse into a multitude of smaller states. I reccommend to set it to Gold Only instead of fully off. Therefore only nations with large areas of gold (mainly non-european countries with the exception of Austria) will have inflation. This in turn leads to more stable nations with more wealth and stronger economies.
  
  
• Size of Colonists: I've never played around with this one too much. It can be set to normal (100) or 200,300 and 400. I advise to leave it as normal due to tweaks discovered later in this guide.
  
  
• Difficulty: I always play on normal as it provides a level playing field. Increasing or decreasing the difficulty only impacts on how all A.I. countries go due to the bonuses they recieve. I would expect that increasing the difficulty would only serve to increase the expansion of the A.I., whilst also maintaining their stability, a result that is highly desirable.
  
  
• A.I. Aggressiveness: (Low, Normal, High). This option changes how likely the A.I is to go to war. To give an indication of its imbalance, even at normal the A.I will go to war at full 200 relations over non-core provinces (if it has a mission to do so). By reducing this to low the A.I will generally only go to war over cores, missions and strategically important territory (including colonies). This in turn reduces blobbing and produces more continuos borders.
  
  
• Spread of Land and Sea provinces: Decides how long after their initial discovery by a member of the same tech as you that it you in turn recieve news of it. Set this to 200 years (instead of the inital 50) as it wil ensure that only nations fully specialised into colonisation and stop that screenshot I showed before from happenning. Hopefully.
  
  
• Spies. Meh, do whatever you want.
  
  
• Lucky Nations: I always play with this either on random or historical. It always ensures that there are a few powerful end-game bosses that will give your nation a run for it's money. The Historical ones are England, Castille, Portugal, France, Austria, Muscowey, The Ottomans and Sweden (I think sweden is #8 :/). These nations, already quite a threat can provide heaps of fun in the late 1700's.

These options should hopefully increase the chances of stable A.I. countries that expand correctly and also reduce blobby colonial coastlines.

Although it may seem to have limited ramifications beyond its immediate area. Your choice of country greatly impacts the game's A.I.. Besides the choice of turning minors into great powers, choosing an already great power and preventing it from collapsing can provide for an also fun and intresting game. A good example of this is Burgundy. By choosing Burgudy you can check Frances eastward ambitions and create a great tug of war kind of game.

Also greatly important on the game is the starting date. Although the initial temptation is to start at the very beginning of the grand campaign, choosing a later date in the mid to late 1400's can make sure that several nations have expanded greatly (along with all of those delicious cores) and have formed stable large empires (most notably France, Spain, GB, and Muscowey). These in turn provide good foes to play against during the game.


By starting at a later date here, I've been able to play against a more formidable, France, GB and Poland.

The choices you make ingame can also effect the A.I.. For example instead of attacking great powers in their moment of weakness, let them recover into a respectable nation with a larger force. This process of selective wars, by attacking and taking provinces from nation that have little liklihood of becoming powerful can lead to the nation you don;t war with becoming actual threats. Another good strategy to implement is to thwart some Nations attempts when the disagree with your ideal game. If blobby colonisation does indeed happen with veery single European minor attempting to claim their bit of American and African coastline, don't be afraid to send a spy, incite some natives and doing this repeatedly until a contiguos border is formed. Little things like this amount to gently proddin the A.I. into doing what you want whether it be become powerful or simply look pretty.

Always remember though that this can have unforseen consequences. In this game as Russia I felt that the Castillians were taking territory they didn't deserve. By inciting rebels I accidentally made a large Catholic Dulkadir appear :P.

Although you may attempt every concievable action to prod the A.I along, the general stupidity of it can sometime prevent your masterplan from achieving fruitition. If all else fails it can sometimes be advisable to mod the surrent savegames files to work around broken game mechanics (I won't give a guide to that here as I only have a rudimentry understanding of it but here is a good link[forum.paradoxplaza.com] )

Sometimes though I feel that the vanilla game is simply not enough to rectify some issues. Mods that work around this very well as well as include whole swathes of new additione to the game are
MEIOU[forum.paradoxplaza.com] and Death & Taxes[forum.paradoxplaza.com]
EDIT: Thanks to ninja4x8 for this mod. Eu+[forum.paradoxplaza.com] rectifies several of the intrinsic issues in the game and provides a much more fufilling experience.
Both of these mods are fantistic in their own right and all lovers of Eu3 should try them out.
I hope you enjoyed this guide and I certainly hope that it will make a positive impact on your games like it did on mine. See you all in Eu4 xD

Thanks everyone so much for over 1000 views! [EDIT:3000 views??? Wow, I never knew the eu3 community had such great support! Keep up the good work guys]
( Jokes everyone, 5000 views! :O). This was far beyond what I expected when I first wrote the guide and has made me seriously consider writing another. Please leave your suggestions in the comments below, favourite this guide for easy access and follow me for more guides!


Notes: Now that Eu4 has come out, I'm likely to get it so maybe we'll see a guide in the future? Who knows :P